


jump into that sweet unknown (with me)

by lemon_verbena



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: (Until They Finally Talk To Each Other Like Adults), 5+1 Things, Cameo from Ilsa Herbert, Drunk Sex, F/M, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Morning After, No Dialogue, Not Britpicked, Relationship Discussions, Smut, Sober Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_verbena/pseuds/lemon_verbena
Summary: The first time they fall into bed together, they’re both well sloshed.The second time they’re not quite as drunk, but it’s still something of an accident.The third time is not an accident at all.Or, five times Robin and Cormoran have sex without talking about what they're doing, and the one time they do. (Plus one time they admit any of this to their friends.)
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 93
Kudos: 208





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a long week, and I've decided to cheer myself up by writing and posting some mild smut. Due to some artistic choices it's not quite my usual style, but I'm having fun writing it and can't wait to share the rest with you. No posting schedule, but I have the next few chapters mostly complete so hopefully it won't be too long. If you recognize any of it, I've posted snippets for WIP Wednesday recently, so fans of those snippets rejoice, the fic is here. (I considered saving this for [the Cormoran Strike Fest of Firsts](https://lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com/post/190942044012) but just couldn't wait that long. I hope you'll all join me for the First Fest though!)
> 
> As always, unbeta'd and written with love.

The first time they fall into bed together, they’re both well sloshed.

It happens in a blur of clear glass clinking and scarred wooden tabletop, a shove and a fall and a gasp; Robin, pressed against Cormoran’s chest, cannot miss the way his laughing eyes fix upon her lips, and—

Well. 

It’s a mess, she knows as it happens, it’s a mess and it’s going to be a regret in the morning, but in the moment Robin cannot think of anything she wants more than to know what Cormoran’s beard feels like against her cheeks, how his laughter will taste on her wine-drenched tongue, and—

He tastes like Doom Bar and Cornwall, exactly as she’s thought he might, and he kisses the way he does everything else, which is to say with a focus and a will and a deftness that has her panting, gasping, as she manouvers herself closer, as his hands grasp her firmly. Robin’s own hands come up to cup his face, drag fingernails through his beard, and it’s electric, is what it is, and— 

She has no excuses for how it happens, the two of them kissing like teenagers out past curfew, stumbling out the door and arm-in-arm down the street, staggering as they cannot stop touching, touching, touching— face, neck, hand, as though disbelieving, as though trying to memorize the moment. It’s fleeting, and they’re both pretending it won’t end.

Robin bounds up the stairs towards the office, the same stairs she takes every day, and stands on the landing, looking down at her partner. She is drunk and she is laughing and she _wants_ him, wants him in every way that she can have him, and from the way he is looking up at her, she think he must want her too. 

Damn tomorrow, Robin thinks, as Cormoran’s eyes trace her figure, silhouetted in the dim light. Damn tomorrow and the day after too, because I shall for once have this, just once. Once might be enough.

As he meets her on the landing, hands grasping her hips to pull her forward and into a devouring kiss, she knows that it won’t be, can’t be, because his mouth on her tastes like forever. But it’s not; of course it’s not. It’s just the alcohol talking, she tells herself, lying.

When they make it up to their office, Robin steps aside, lets Cormoran lead the way. If they were to change course, it would have to be now, here on the landing where they first met, a thousand years ago. 

But Cormoran takes her hand and brings her along up the stairs to his flat, and Robin is laughing, joyful and free and ignoring tomorrow. It is everything she wants and more, as Cormoran fumbles his lock open and pulls her inside, and she goes willingly, nearly tripping in her haste to reach for him. 

It’s a mess of hands and lips and limbs as they disrobe, and Robin turns her back as she unzips her sheath dress to let Cormoran take his prosthetic off in some little privacy. She waits until she hears him land on the mattress to drop the silky fabric to the ground, turning around to bare herself to him, clad now only in her lacy bra and thin panties, knowing somehow that Cormoran is the sort of man to appreciate a nicely-wrapped package. 

Her heart beats wildly as the reclining Cormoran stares at her, standing still in the wavering shadows of his shoddy little flat, and she can feel herself growing damper as his eyes flicker over her, breasts to hips to legs and up to her face, as his tongue wets his lips and reaches for her, possessive, wanting— 

Well.

She knows how that feels, that burn of desire that licks at the skin and melts the bones, and she goes to him, easily, lets him wrap his hands around her hips, pull her down to meet him. She straddles him, pressing her hands into his skin, wondering in a sideways slide of drunken thought if she might imprint herself into him so that everyone will be able to see: Robin was here. 

He kisses her as though the devil is nipping at his heels, as though they’re running out of time, and Robin does not shrink back from the onslaught but meets him. It’s wet and slick between them, and as Robin sinks her teeth into his lower lip she knows she is trying to mark him. To stake a claim, even though he is not hers to be claimed. 

There’s nothing easier than sliding her hand down his body, the rough hair of his pectorals a shivery tickle as she seeks his cock, and the gutteral sound he makes when she wraps one hand around him echoes between their mouths. She jacks him once, twice before he bats her hand away, his own hand moving from her hip to dip between her legs, where she is wet and wanting. 

It’s messy, this first time, as they fumble themselves together, figuring out how to make everything go right, but— it’s easy, easier than it should be. It’s simple and good and Robin wonders if anything has ever felt so simple, so good— 

Cormoran, between her thighs, his hands clutching at her hips as she rides him, shuddering and panting as his mouth finds her nipple. Cormoran’s voice in her ear, urging her on with broken syllables, her name so sweet on his tongue. Cormoran, Cormoran, Cormoran— 

She gasps out his name and he fucks her harder, as though trying to lay a claim of his own, and Robin knows even as she’s flying apart that this is a mistake she will not be able to regret. 

In the afterglow, Cormoran kisses her shoulder with a quiet tenderness, and Robin allows herself to fall asleep there beside him, tucked against his side, pleasantly sore and still a little drunk. She touches his face with gentle fingers, tracing his scar, the curve of his brow.

When she awakens in the misty pre-dawn, it’s to find that Cormoran has stolen the covers and she is cold and sober. Robin dresses herself back in her clothing from the night before, touches Cormoran’s face once more, and lets herself out of his flat. It’s better, she thinks as she makes her way down the stairs. Waking up beside him would be a bridge too far.

The pleasant ache between her thighs reminds her that they’ve crossed enough bridges for one night. 

She takes herself home to her shared flat, washes up and texts Cormoran a brief message— just that she’s home safe, just so he won’t worry. She falls asleep again alone.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time they’re not quite as drunk, but it’s still something of an accident. 

Cormoran isn’t _planning_ anything, but he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it— the way Robin leaned down to kiss him, the way she’d said his name— and he’s cursed himself a hundred times for not being able to remember more. If he only has one chance, he wants to remember everything in perfect detail; but he’s had his chance, and it’s gone, and all he has are fragments. 

It’s been strange between them, and then again it’s been strange partially because it _hasn’t_ been strange. They’ve been successfully pretending that nothing is different, and they’ve done so well at it that they’ve nearly convinced themselves. Which is why Cormoran thinks nothing of it when they’re out in the countryside, chasing down some promising leads, and end up booking rooms at a forgettably seedy motel; it’s cheap and serviceable and next door to a pub, and really, what more can a motel offer?

So they’re drinking, but not too much, toasting their success at finding the information they were sent to gather, and there’s a moment— a fragile, lovely moment— when Cormoran looks at Robin’s face, smiling and bright, and he glances at her lips— and she catches his glance—

And they look at each other, and between them there is an understanding. He knocks back the rest of his pint, Robin throws down cash to cover their bill, and without words he offers her a hand and she takes it. 

Together, they walk back to their rooms, in a sort of tense, giddy silence. Her palm is warm in his, and Cormoran wonders— well, rather a lot of things. 

He comes to a stop before his door, which is two before hers, and releases her hand to take out his room key. If Robin has changed her mind, she has plenty of time to step away, enter her own room— they can pretend nothing happened, because nothing will happen.

But Robin waits as Cormoran unlocks his door, opens it for her, and bows her inside. She walks into his room with confidence, as though she has every right to be here, and Cormoran will not argue with that. He will take whatever of her he can have, and never complain, because he knows he can never have all of her. 

It’s like the first time, a match catching into an inferno, zero to sixty in moments. Cormoran knows that he is the one to make the first move, stepping in close behind her to pull her hips backwards into his, her back to his front as he dips his head down to kiss her neck. 

She presses back, a hand coming up to clutch at his curls, and Cormoran bites her neck gently in retaliation. She moans, and they’re off, clothing shucked and forgotten in a scramble to press skin to skin. Robin’s tongue on his collarbone— her breasts in his hands— he grinds his aching cock into the softness of her and she yanks at his slacks. 

He chooses instead to slip a hand up her skirt to press his fingers up to her cunt, still wrapped in her panties, and she is— she is _so_ wet, Cormoran curses, how can she be so wet for him— 

Robin doesn’t answer, her nimble fingers undoing his belt even as he pushes the fabric aside to fuck her with one, then two fingers, her cunt slick and pulsing around his digits. She swears at him and quivers and he cannot hold himself back, not as Robin’s biting into his neck and ordering him to just _fuck_ her already— 

Cormoran doesn’t pause for long enough to take off his prosthesis, choosing instead to take her bent over the mattress, pressing his face into Robin’s hair as she gasps his name. He takes the time to sort out his hand at her clit as her nails rake into his neck— marking, claiming— and Robin falls apart beneath him with an artless sort of beauty that he seals into his memory.

This time, he swears to himself, he will remember.

They collapse onto the bed in a pile of limbs, and it seems so very simple to kiss her shoulder where it presents itself beside his face. Robin absently pats his stomach in reply, relaxed in the post-orgasmic glow of the evening. Cormoran wonders if she might be convinced to stay long enough for him to recover, if perhaps she might be amenable to him crawling back between her silky thighs to see if he can bring her off again at an angle from which he can see her face.

Knowing what she looks like when he brings her to orgasm might make him a masochist, because Cormoran knows it will be burnt into his memory, and that might finally be enough to impact their working relationship. But, he thinks, there are worse things to be than a masochist.

Before he can work up the energy or the nerve to ask her, though, Robin stands to use the washroom, and when she comes out she presses a gentle kiss to his cheek and puts her clothing back on, and that’s that. 

Or, well. 

That’s supposed to be that.


	3. Chapter 3

The third time is not an accident at all. Robin makes her choice when she books them a room— one room, a singular room— for an overnight trip. It has two queen-sized beds and an oversized bathroom with both a shower stall and a bathtub with jacuzzi jets. Their client is paying for it, and they could easily afford to get two rooms, but.

The memory of Cormoran’s voice, murmuring filthy endearments into her ear as he pounds into her from behind, is enough to convince her that one room will be absolutely fine. 

When they check in she steps forward, charming the desk clerk as she leaves the deliberate impression that she and Cormoran are married. He only watches her, bemused, until the clerk gives them their keycards and wishes them a pleasant stay.

That’s when he notices that the cards are slotted into one holder; that’s when he processes what Robin has done. She is already walking to the elevator. 

When Cormoran asks her what she’s on about, she only raises an eyebrow, as if to say _isn’t it obvious?_

He relaxes when he sees there are two beds. Robin bites her lip against her smile; he is entirely transparent to her, at least in this. He claims the bed closer to the door and changes for their meeting in the washroom. She follows his lead. 

After their meeting, and their meal, and two or perhaps three drinks, Cormoran follows Robin back into the elevator. When the doors close, he very tentatively reaches out his hand to stroke one finger down the side of her palm, asking a silent question. She turns to face him and it’s easy, so easy, to pull his face down to be kissed. 

It’s so simple, in the end, to allow Cormoran to pull her into their room, to press her against the wall, to slide his hands under the dress she wore specifically because he’d once told her the color brings out her eyes. It’s not difficult at all to once more let him slide his thick fingers into her cunt, where she has been wet and aching for him; his face when he feels her is shocked, pleased, hungry. 

Robin cants her hips against his hand and says please. He groans and asks her to take off her dress. 

He fucks her with a sort of controlled intensity that is perhaps the sexiest thing that Robin has ever experienced in bed. She wonders if she ought to feel self-conscious at the way Cormoran tracks her movements, her expressions, reacts and adjusts to her breathy, embarrassing noises. But she only feels secure, safe in the knowledge that he isn’t thinking about another woman while he is fucking her. She is the center of his focus. He is entirely hers in this moment.

Cormoran brings her off with a hand at her clit, a mouth at her breast, and his cock deep within her. Once she’s cum, she encourages him to do the same, and she shudders with the pleasure-pain of overstimulation as his thrusts get harder, deeper, as he groans her name and spills within her. 

He cleans himself up and she goes to prepare herself for bed, performing her nightly rituals in quiet contemplation of her choices. When she emerges from the washroom she finds Cormoran has turned out all but one of the lights and has gone to sleep in his bed, the one they christened. 

After a long moment of deliberation, she crawls in beside him, soaking up his warmth. Cormoran makes a pleased sound in her ear, curling himself around her, tucking her body against his, and she falls asleep to the sound of his breathing. 

She wakes up alone.

Robin dresses and meets Cormoran for breakfast in the lobby, and they don’t speak of it on the journey home.


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth time is— well you see, it’s— 

Here’s the thing:

They don’t talk about it. It keeps happening. 

They maintain their working relationship mainly by ease of habit, by force of will. Each decides, entirely independently, that they will not be the first to crack, to demand an answer, to bring it up aloud. So they don’t.

And it.... works, mostly. They continue on as though Robin doesn’t get herself off while pretending the hand between her thighs is Cormoran’s, as though Cormoran doesn’t think about the noise Robin makes as she cums while he fists his cock in the shower. They function. They get by.

And when they go out of town, they don’t bother booking two rooms.

Robin quickly starts to look forward to these trips. Cormoran starts to influence clients into sending them out of town. He doesn’t care where. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is the way he gets to follow Robin into whatever cheap motel room they book, the way he is allowed to kiss her against the door, pin her hips with his own, lick into the sweet curve of her neck. What matters is that she lets him fuck her however they can manage— on the bed, over the desk, between her thighs, behind her, above her. Once he’s so impatient that he presses her against the wall, brackets her with his body, and brings her off right there, his fingers buried inside her cunt and his mouth at her breast, a supplicant at her altar. 

The fourth time is also the fifth time, the seventh, the tenth. It would all blur together except for the way Cormoran makes note of each time, presses it into his memory like flowers between the pages of a heavy book. 

He remembers each time because he always assumes it will be their last. He knows that these things all must come to an end. But he cannot bring himself to end it, despite knowing that he really ought to find himself a nice safe girlfriend who is not his co-worker, his business partner, his closest friend. He should not risk it all for these nights in hotel rooms, pretending that he’s not about to upset a house of cards with every curl of fingers, every thrust of hips.

They don’t speak about it when they’re in London. They hardly speak of it when they’re out of London. They know each other well enough that words are functionally unnecessary— a heated look, a flick of the eyes, a single fingertip trailing over a wrist. It’s so simple.

Cormoran looks over at Robin as she drives them back to London after a particularly enjoyable night and wishes that he could have met her any other way. That she could have been one of the women his friends try to set him up with, or someone he met at a bar, or even a client. Anyone but his partner. 

Because at the end of the day, she is more important to him as his co-worker, his business partner, his closest friend, than as his bedmate. No matter how good the sex is. 

And it’s so very, very good.


	5. Chapter 5

After the first time, they haven’t gone back to his flat again. Cormoran has never seen her flat, the one she shares with Nick and Ilsa’s actor friend. Their entire— what is it, an affair? a fling? it can’t truthfully be called a relationship— whatever it is, it has been conducted in hotel rooms and motel beds, as though it’s furtive, as though it’s secret. As though anyone in the world cares if they fall into bed together. 

(Well, Cormoran allows to himself late one night. Ilsa would care, mainly to throw them both a party. A whole bloody parade. And Fucking Matthew might care, if only to feel vindicated in his petty accusations. But mostly, no one at all would care about the things they do together, the things they do to each other. There’s no earthly reason not to talk about it, except for the fact that they just don’t.)

The fifth time, in any way that matters, is when he brings Robin upstairs, back to his flat, where they began this thing, whatever it can be called. 

They spend the day chipping fruitlessly away at a case which pays well and has absolutely no other redeeming values. They eat takeaway bibimbap and rearrange the notecards of information as though placing them in the correct configuration will unlock the whole thing in a flash of light, which of course it doesn’t. At 11 pm Cormoran brings out some bottles of beer to soothe his headache away. Robin takes one.

At quarter-past midnight Robin throws down the notecards she’s holding to swear colorfully at them, and tosses back her head to down the rest of her beer. Cormoran reaches out, only intending to soothe, to comfort. 

When his hand touches hers, she looks up at him, and it’s like the first time again; easy, simple, a forgone conclusion. She takes his hand and allows him to lead her out of the office and up the stairs, standing quietly while he unlocks the door, just close enough that he can feel the heat of her body beside his. 

Robin knows what she’s doing as she steps into Cormoran’s flat, or at least she thinks she knows what she’s doing, or at least she tells herself that she does. It’s simple, you see, straightforward, two people just enjoying each other's company— 

Cormoran’s body presses her down into the mattress, his mouth at her neck and her hand shoving at his shirt. She parts her legs for him easily, familiar with the way his bulk is so gentle above her, wanting him to drive all her frustrations out of her body with his hands and cock and mouth. 

Tonight she turns over, lets him fuck her from behind, knowing that he likes her ass, enjoying the way his hairy chest feels against the long slope of her back. She opens herself to him, lets him move and adjust her so that he can work himself inside her wet slick cunt, shudders as he presses her flat, covers her with his body. 

With any other man she couldn’t lay like this. It would be too much, she knows, it would bring forward all sorts of memories; but with Cormoran it is soothing, to be taken care of thusly. She knows him, trusts him in a way she didn’t think she was capable of any more— 

Her face is pressed into his pillow, and instead of impersonal hotel linens it smells like him. His shampoo and his Benson & Hedges and his sweat and just _Cormoran,_ and Robin closes her eyes and is startled to realize she is crying silent tears as Cormoran rocks into her. He tells her in his raspy smoky voice how good she is, how fucking lovely, how her cunt is so perfect, good girl good girl wonderful perfect RobinRobinRobin— 

Her orgasm ripples through her like a benediction. Cormoran gasps her name when he cums. 

If he notices her tears, he is kind enough not to say anything. She thinks, laying beside him, their chests heaving, that that might be the moment she realizes she is falling in love with him. Or perhaps more properly, that she has gone and fallen in love with him without noticing.

Of all the inconvenient things. 

Cormoran, lost in his own postcoital haze, only pulls her close, tucks her back against his front so he can bury his face into her shoulder, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the curve of her neck. He does not say anything, and neither does she. 

But Robin stays, that night, and when she wakes up she is still wrapped in his arms, and she allows herself this. To be held. To be cared for. 

She falls back asleep in the misty pre-dawn light with Cormoran’s breathing rumbling in his chest behind her, and tells herself that it’s nothing really. Nothing serious. Her inconvenient feelings notwithstanding, their partnership is far more important than what they do in bed together. 

Robin knows she cannot keep him. She can only treasure the moments she gets. As the poets say: nothing gold can stay.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter nearly doubles the length of the work thus far; thank you, everyone, for your kindness and comments and kudos. I couldn't do this without you. There's only one chapter after this, to wrap things up. Thank you for coming on this journey with me.

Cormoran awakens to hair in his mouth and his raging morning wood pressed against the warm soft curve of another body, and for a long moment he thinks he is still asleep and dreaming.

But then he blinks again and realizes that no, this is real. He is in his own bed and Robin Ellacott is curled against him, her breath ghosting over his arm where he has wrapped it around her chest to hold her close. She is still asleep, her face smooth and relaxed, and Cormoran only looks at her, looks and looks. Drinks her in, because they do not do this here, not in London, not in his flat. This is against all the unspoken rules they have been following, but it is exactly what he has wanted, against his better judgement.

He doesn’t want to disturb her, because once she is awake the spell is broken. His brain, incessant, launches itself onto a tangent about Sleeping Beauty as he memorizes the way her hair fans golden against his worn blue-grey sheets, the milk-and-peaches of her skin glowing in the sunlight filtering in through his cheap curtains. 

Robin is a very attractive woman. He’s always known this, because he is a man with eyes and a libido. But, Cormoran thinks, he appreciates her beauty now in a way he couldn’t have before. Before he knew how she bites her lip when she’s thinking, how she drums her fingers on the steering wheel while sitting at a stoplight, how she wrinkles her nose when she laughs. He couldn’t have understood how incandescent she looks when she is on the verge of orgasm, how her mouth shapes his name— 

He is so, so hard, and Robin shifts in her sleep, rubbing her ass against his cock and he is going to cum in his pants like a teenager if he doesn’t start thinking about something, anything else. 

_Anything— what will we eat? There’s nothing in the fridge but some beer and mustard and maybe some leftover takeaways, the bread has probably gone off by now, perhaps there’s some cream for coffee but I wouldn’t bank on it--_

Robin rolls her shoulders and shifts, and he knows she will be awake soon. He usually sleeps later than she does, seeing as she is the morning person of the pair of them, and he is accustomed to her already being up and about by the time he rises. They can go back to normal more easily, he knows, if they aren’t forced to acknowledge the things they do together in bed. 

But today he has awoken first, and rather than being afraid to rock the boat Cormoran is seized with the perverse urge to knock it over and force them both to swim for land. If it means he can never have this again, well. 

He is quite used to not getting the things he wants. 

It is worse to only have this some of the time. He’s been able to deny it as they flit in and out of hotel rooms, but looking at Robin sleeping in his arms, in his bed, Cormoran knows that he cannot keep living half a life.

He’s done it before, and it nearly broke him. He won’t do it again.

He leans down to nudge a kiss beside Robin’s mouth. She sighs and smiles against his lips, her fingers coming up to brush his face. 

His heart aches in his chest. He wants this, wants for once to have it all, both his cake and the eating of it. There is no reason they cannot be this, all of this, to each other, Cormoran thinks. Why not be partners in every way? Why not have this every morning?

They are suited to each other, down to the ground and back up again. She compliments him, focuses him. Robin makes Cormoran want to do things better, this time around. He _wants_ this, wants her. 

And if it implodes, he wants that to happen too. He cannot go on like this indefinitely. If he must get over her, he needs to start now. 

“Good morning,” he murmurs, kissing Robin’s cheek. 

“Mm,” she hums back, her eyes still closed. “Morning. What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” Cormoran says. “Haven’t looked. Does it matter? I don’t have anything scheduled for today.”

Robin stretches, a full-body affair that curls her fingers, points her toes. He hears her joints pop satisfyingly. 

“I don’t think I do either,” she says. “Laundry, maybe, but nothing that can’t wait. So I suppose it doesn’t matter after all.”

“If you don’t have anywhere else to be,” Cormoran says, his hand slowly tracing a path along the top of her thigh.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Robin says, her eyes blinking open to look up at him. He is struck by the way her eyes match the color of his bedding. Did he choose it because it reminded him of her? He cannot discount the possibility.

“I haven’t said it yet,” he replies. “How do you know it’s a good idea?”

Robin licks her bottom lip, her eyes blinking slowly. “You usually have your best ideas in the morning,” she says, surprising him. “And your biggest breakthroughs at night.”

She knows him, really _knows_ him. Cormoran kisses her, slow and thorough, ignoring the fact that they both have stale breath in favor of the slide of his tongue along hers. Robin’s hand comes up to cup his bristly cheek, and he rubs against her palm, making her laugh.

As they kiss, he slowly manouvers Robin so that she moves atop him, straddling him as he knows she likes to do. He’s not easy to ride, because he is big enough that not all women can balance atop him securely, but Robin can. This he knows intimately. 

She looks down at him, her hair falling around them messily, as he presses his aching cock up against the heat of her cunt where it is hidden only by her panties. She grinds down against him, and it’s so good, as it always is.

“Good morning to me,” Robin murmurs appreciatively, rocking against him slowly, deliciously, drawing it out. Cormoran says nothing, just reaches up to palm one of her lovely breasts through her top where it sits in his line of view. 

“Oh,” she sighs as he tweaks her nipple. “Mm, Cormoran.”

“Yeah,” he says, voice rumbling in his chest. His need to be inside her is warring with his need to draw this out, make it last, keep her like this for as long as possible. 

“Inside me,” she says, still soft but wanting now. “Oh, please— inside me, Cormoran.”

How could he do anything but obey, when Robin says his name like that? When she asks him so prettily?

He fumbles out a rubber from the box— he will only have one left after this— and rips it open as Robin slips her hands inside his boxer shorts to palm him. He shudders and bats her hands away, and she’s smiling as she lets him yank away the fabric and roll on the condom. 

When she realigns herself atop him, Robin is no longer wearing her panties, and Cormoran’s eyes are fixed on his cock where she notches it against herself, unable to look away as she begins to slide him inside her hot wet cunt. He watches himself disappear into her and feels it all the way from his scalp to his toes; he was meant to do this, to fuck this woman, to please her in any way he is given the chance.

Robin rides him easily, confidently, having done it many times before. She rocks in a steady rhythm, finding the angle she likes best and sticking to it, her breathy sighs an aphrodisiac. Cormoran resists the urge to fuck up into her, knowing it’s not what she wants, and focuses instead on his hands on her hips, her ass, on the sway of her breasts as she palms her own nipple. 

“Oh,” Robin sighs, “god, Cormoran, yes…”

“You like that, baby?” he asks, almost not recognizing his own voice as it comes from his mouth. It’s the sort of thing one might hear in a porno, but it feels so natural to ask it, seeking feedback, needing to know that he’s doing it right for her.

“Yes,” Robin affirms, her hips maintaining their pace. “Yes, you feel so good, oh—”

Cormoran arches his lower back, giving Robin a slightly different angle to fuck herself on his cock, and the noise she makes is his favorite noise in the entire world. 

“Fuck,” she says, “fuck, yes, like that—”

And Cormoran simply does what she says, what he knows she likes, until Robin is shaking and pink, out of breath and most of the way to orgasm. Until she falls forward onto his chest to kiss the matted sweaty hair there without flinching, to let him roll his hips to fuck up into her until she shivers apart, his cock inside her and her own hand at her clit. 

Cormoran knows she likes to be in control of her own pleasure sometimes, and he understands why, and he does not argue. This is a thing they do together, as a team, the giving and the sharing of pleasure; he does not need to control her, in bed or otherwise. He trusts her now to know her limits, to know his. 

_Oh bloody fuck,_ Cormoran realizes as he’s thrusting up into the sweet slick heat of Robin’s cunt, as she’s crooning his name into his ear. _I’ve gone and fallen in love with her._

But this is followed very quickly by his own orgasm, and he can’t focus on his epiphany in the warm white haze of his own physical bliss. Robin remains comfortably atop him as he pulses inside of her, groaning out her name, and waits until his breathing resumes normally to kiss his chest and roll off of him. He holds the condom shut and rolls on his side to deal with it. 

When he rolls back, Robin is lying peacefully on her side of his bed, looking like everything he’s always pretended he didn’t want, need, crave. 

“That’s a nice start to the day,” Robin says, relaxed bonelessly, watching him through half-closed eyes. 

Before he can stop himself, before he can think better of it, Cormoran’s mouth has opened and he can hear himself speaking.

“I’d be happy to provide such to you any time, at your convenience.”

It wasn’t precisely what he’d meant to ask: _would you like to start every morning like this? Together? With me?_

“I don’t know,” Robin sighs, fluttering her lashes at him. “It’s a bit of a commute from here back to my flat and then back to my office. Could add up fast.”

She’s joking, flirting, not taking him seriously. He could allow her to do this, turn it into a joke, let it rest. But he needs— he _needs_ — to know. 

Cormoran props himself up on his elbows, working himself upright. “I mean it, Robin,” he says, striving to keep his voice even, not too nervous, not too earnest. “We could do this in places other than hotel rooms. It’s a nice change of pace, isn’t it, being able to enjoy it and not worry about housekeeping interrupting?”

She shifts up onto an elbow to look at him, and he wonders if he’s imagining the look on her face— panic?

“Maybe,” Robin says. “But let’s not— we don’t have to talk about this now.”

“Why not?” Cormoran asks, frustration bubbling up inside him. “Why shouldn’t we discuss this— thing we’re doing?”

“Because—” Robin glances away from him, searching for something to say that’s not _because we never talk about it._

“We can’t avoid the topic forever,” Cormoran goes on. He knows he’s being hypocritical, that he thrives on things being unsaid, but then again, is his life an example of thriving? Who could he have been if he’d learned how to communicate better earlier? 

He won’t blow up his life because of mere cowardice. Not again. 

“Why not?” Robin asks, and he can see that she’s asking more for the sake of it than because she believes it’s possible. “We’ve been doing pretty well until now, I should think.”

“I know where ‘not talking about things’ ends up,” Cormoran says, ruthless, knowing he will hurt both of them to do this if he must. “Not talking about things leads to it choking the life out of everything, eventually. I’m not going to fuck up everything we have to try and pretend we’re the only people in the world who can work together and sleep together and not fuck it up eventually.”

Robin looks as though he’s slapped her, eyes wide and cheeks pale. “Oh,” she says, hollowly. “So we’re going to fuck it up eventually. I see.”

“No— oh, bollocks, that’s not what I—”

“You literally just said that, Cormoran,” Robin presses him, and she can be just as ruthless as he. “You just said that we can’t pretend to be the only people in the world who can both work and sleep together without fucking up. Pray tell, what else could you have meant by that?”

Cormoran wishes he was wearing literally anything right now, but they’re both naked, tucked under his thin topsheet, ten inches apart. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to hide behind.

“I meant—” he starts, then takes a deep breath. “I meant that we need to talk about this at some point. Because I don’t— I don’t want it to stop, Robin, you can’t think I—”

But from her face he sees that she _can_ think he means that. 

“I _just_ offered to do this any morning you’d like, love, you can’t think I’m trying to end this,” Cormoran says, disliking the note of pleading that has entered his tone. “I just don’t— I— fuck, this is going poorly.”

“You don’t say,” Robin says drily, and Cormoran loves her like an arrow in his chest, just then, in that moment. 

“Robin,” he says, letting her name mean everything to him, “Robin, please. You know I— that I—”

He cannot think of what he’s trying to say. Robin rescues him from trying to finish his sentence. 

“I don’t want to end this,” she says, a tight little whispered confession that she gives him like a gift. “Any of this. If you want to, then we will, of course, but I don’t— there’s no reason to end it, is there?”

_I’m in love with you and it’s going to kill me to lose you when this blows up in our faces,_ Cormoran thinks. 

“There isn’t,” he says instead. “But I, I just think— we need to talk about it. Because not talking about it will— that’s how things get ruined.”

It is how he has always ruined things. 

“Alright,” Robin says. “Then let’s talk.”

She says this with bravado, her chin up as though asking for the world to swing at it. She is expecting the worst from him. Cormoran does not want to give it to her. 

“I— can we agree,” Cormoran says, wildly grasping for the things he’d thought to say. “To keep what happens in the bedroom out of the office?”

“Of course,” Robin says, offended. “I thought we were already doing that. We shouldn’t—” she huffs, amused. “Mix business with pleasure.”

“Love, I think that ship is well out to sea,” Cormoran replies, and she smiles at him. 

“Point,” she concedes. “But yes. We should keep them separate.”

Cormoran nods. “And. Uh.”

It has been a long time since he’s had this sort of conversation, owing to the fact that he usually avoids being in relationships that would involve one. He’s not in the habit of discussing parameters. 

Robin seems to be allowing him to hang himself with the silence. She watches him, serious, nervous perhaps. 

“I don’t know how to talk about this,” he admits in a rush. “I don’t— I haven’t— I’m not good at relationships, Robin.”

She snorts a soft laugh. “I hadn’t noticed,” she says, an eyebrow arched. “Is that what we’re doing, having a relationship?”

“Isn’t it?” Cormoran asks, wanting her to say yes. “What else would you call it?”

“I’ve been informed that this sort of thing is referred to as fuckbuddies,” Robin says, looking far too put together for a woman who is wearing nothing but his bedsheet, who he has extremely recently brought to orgasm. 

“That’s bollocks,” Cormoran says, appalled. “What sort of word is that, fuckbuddies?”

Robin laughs, and it’s a victory, that laugh. “It’s very awful, isn’t it? But it does feel applicable. I don’t think this— whatever we’ve been doing— qualifies as a relationship.”

Cormoran takes a breath. “How would you feel about changing that?”

“To what?” Robin asks, confused, and ouch, Cormoran thinks, it’s not a good sign when a direct question is that unclear. 

“Not very flattering to be that easy to misunderstand,” he mutters under his breath. Robin only looks more confused; she’s picking at her cuticles again, a sure sign of stress. 

“Are you asking me if— if I’d like to be in a relationship with you?” Robin asks tentatively. 

“Yes,” Cormoran says with relief. “Yes. I am. Would you?”

“It doesn’t seem like a very good idea,” Robin says, and if her confusion had hurt her bluntness is at least familiar. 

“No,” Cormoran agrees. “I’ve thought about it, and it’s a terrible idea. A real disaster in the making. Nevertheless, would you like to?”

He’s filled now with a strange mixture of desperation and nicotine craving that is turning his insides into an MC Escher painting. If she were his friend, he’d counsel her to say no; if he were his own friend, he’d have said to break it off ages ago. But he wants more than anything for Robin to say yes. 

She’s smiling at him, just a bit, and it gives him hope. 

“So you’re saying that being in a relationship with you is a bad idea and you’d like me to do it anyway? What sort of offer is that?”

“An honest one,” Cormoran says, attempting to quash his hope but failing miserably. “I try not to lie to you, Robin, so I can’t tell you that it’s a good idea, but while I am being honest, I ought to tell you that I’d really like for you to say yes. I’m not good at relationships, but for you— with you— I’d like to try. I’d also like to have a cigarette and maybe go another round, if you’re amenable.”

He manages to spit all of this out, feeling as though any charm he might possess has deserted him, and simply waits for Robin to pass the sentence. He will not rush her, or press her, in any way. He needs to know that her choice was entirely hers, that she will stay or go entirely on her own. He needs for her to want him back.

Robin sits, enrobed in his sheet, and stares up at his ceiling for what feels like an eternity. It is probably 90 seconds.

“Will you…” she says at last. Cormoran stops thinking about the whereabouts of his cigs to look at her. 

“Yes,” he says into her pause. “Probably. If you ask me to.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” Robin says, looking at him with wide eyes.

“But you’re the one who’s asking, and you don’t—” Cormoran searches for the right words. “You don’t ask too much of me. Most of the time I think you probably ask too little, actually. So if you’re going to ask me for something that is in my power, the answer will probably be yes.”

She lunges to kiss him, full and rich on the mouth, and Cormoran’s brain ceases thinking about cigarettes immediately to focus on kissing Robin. It is far more pleasurable. 

“Yes?” he asks into her mouth.

“Yes,” she sighs back, her fingers gripping his shoulders. “You’ve made a decent enough case for it. If it’s a mistake, well. Let’s make it together, yeah?”

Cormoran’s grin is vicious with victory. He is so unaccustomed to getting to _have_ things. 

“Let’s,” he agrees, and sets himself to showing Robin just how happy he is with her decision. 

As he licks into her cunt, sweeter than any nicotine fix, Cormoran wonders what Robin was going to ask him for. He’d give her the stars, if he could figure out how to get them down, if she’ll only continue being his in every way that matters— co-worker, business partner, closest friend. Girlfriend? 

Above him, Robin clutches at his hair and moans his name, and Cormoran decides that it really doesn’t matter what they call it, as long as they’re together.


	7. Chapter 7

“So you’re— what?” Ilsa asks, pointing at Cormoran with one of her chips. “You’re dating?”

Cormoran cannot stop his grimace when Ilsa uses that word. It feels so… _juvenile,_ compared to what he and Robin have, what they’re doing. She cackles at him, biting into a chip cheerfully.

“Not dating, then,” she says. “But to be clear, you _are_ sleeping together.”

Cormoran takes a big bite of his fish to avoid having to verbally confirm this, which is answer enough for Ilsa. She pumps her fist, just a tiny bit.

“I told you!” she says to Nick, who has intelligently been staying out of this. “What did I say, I told you that Robin would be good for him, didn’t I!”

“You did,” Nick says mildly, taking another bite of his chippy. 

“So you’re together,” Ilsa says, focusing back on Cormoran with all the intensity of her lawyer’s stare. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Cormoran confirms. “Robin and I are… together.”

He cannot stop the satisfaction in his voice. He sounds pleased with himself, which in fairness, he is. 

“You’re together as in you’ve been sleeping together for however long and pretending that it’s all fine, or as in you’ve discussed this with her and you’re on the same page and you’re committing to each other in some capacity?” Ilsa asks.

“Fuck off, Ilsa,” Cormoran says, choking on a laugh and his fish. “Call me out like that in the fucking chippy, jesus.”

“What, I’m just _asking,_ ” Ilsa says, aggrieved and laughing at him. “We both know your modus operandi, is all I’m saying.”

“Keep the your fancy lawyering terms out of my relationship,” Cormoran says, needling her back. Nick is steadily shoveling chips into his mouth and rolling his eyes at them both.

“So you’ve talked to her,” Ilsa asks again, relentless as ever. 

Cormoran remembers the way Robin had blushed when he’d managed to fumblingly ask her if she was willing to let people know about their relationship. If it could be something real, something meaningful. If she’d be his partner in every way that mattered. If she felt like what they’d been doing was worth keeping, nurturing, working on. 

He remembers the way she’d said yes. 

He also remembers the way she’d followed him up the stairs to his shabby flat, which was made immediately less shabby by her presence in it. The way she’d unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his slacks, told him she wanted him. 

“Yeah,” Cormoran says, after a pause which has most certainly been too long. He wonders if he’s blushing. He’s too old to blush. “Yeah, we— we talked about it. She said I could tell you. So. Here we are.”

“Oh, look at you, using your words like a big boy!” Ilsa cheers, clapping. “I’m so proud of you!”

“We’re happy for you, Oggy,” Nick says, seriously, earnestly. “You look good. Robin’s good for you.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran says again. “She is. She’s— the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time, I think.”

“That’s right,” Ilsa says, pointing at him with one slim finger. “Don’t you go forgetting that. Because if you break up, I’m tossing you and keeping Robin, she’s an angel and she always brings the kind of wine I like when she comes for dinner.”

“Oi!” Cormoran says, tossing a chip at Ilsa. “Is there no loyalty in this world?”

The bell at the door jingles, and Cormoran swings around once more, and this time it’s her. He grins as Robin comes over to their table and sits beside him.

“Hello, love,” he greets her, and she obligingly presents her cheek to be kissed.

“I take it he told you, then,” Robin says to Nick and Ilsa. Ilsa is beaming at them like a benevolent society matron watching a couple she introduced saying their vows at the altar.

“He did, and I was just telling Corm that if he fucks it up we’re getting rid of him and keeping you,” Ilsa says.

Robin laughs, pressing her leg against Cormoran’s under the table. “Thank you,” she says. “But I doubt it’ll come to that.”

Cormoran ignores the look Ilsa exchanges with Nick in favor of pushing the basket of fish and chips he’s been saving for Robin over in front of her. “Here you go, love,” he says, as Robin falls on it like a woman starving. 

“So what are you calling this?” Ilsa asks as Robin dumps vinegar on her chips. “Cormoran says you’re not dating?”

“No?” Robin says, looking up. She shoves three chips into her mouth at once.

“So what are you doing, then?” Ilsa asks. 

Nick nudges her. “Love, don’t lawyer at the poor girl. They’re not signing a merger, they’re in a relationship.”

Robin looks over at Cormoran, and he cannot help smiling back. She turns to Ilsa and shrugs as she swallows.

“We’re partners,” she says. “We’re in love. It’s not that complicated, really. Pass the salt?”

Cormoran watches Robin with thunderstruck eyes as she accepts the shaker from Ilsa.

“We are?” he says, willing his voice to stay steady. 

“What?” Robin asks, her mouth full. 

“We’re—” 

He cannot say it. They haven’t said it. 

Ilsa, ever one for details, gasps and hits Nick’s arm. “Is this the first time you’ve said that?”

“Said what?” Robin asks, irritable in her confusion. “If someone would be so kind as to explain—”

“You’re in _love,_ ” Ilsa whispers, only moderately tempering her glee.

“Oh,” Robin says. She glances at Cormoran. “Well. I mean.” She suddenly looks so terribly nervous. “Aren’t we?”

Cormoran’s mouth moves, but no sound comes out. It’s not at all how he imagined saying it for the first time, though he’s bitten it back too many times to count; they’re in a chippy, with an audience, after an exhausting week, but. 

In the end, it’s perfect, because it’s with her, isn’t it?

“Yeah,” he says, low. “Yeah, we’re in love.”

And Robin’s smile— oh, her smile.

It almost makes him forget that Ilsa is making gleeful noises across the table as they kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the lack of smut in the coda chapter; I realized I wanted to wrap up the "admission of feelings" plot thread I set up, and didn't want to turn it into a whole other fic, and then Ilsa popped up... Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this journey with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I remain so grateful.
> 
> Don't forget to join us for the [Cormoran Strike Fest of Firsts](https://lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com/post/612065715179110400/lemon-verbena-writes-the-cormoran-strike-fest) coming up at the end of the month!


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